He was about to become a father when he heard about the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
Filmmaker Mobolaji Olambiwonnu spoke to Brut about why it felt personal to him...
Filmmaker Mobolaji Olambiwonnu spoke to Brut about why it felt personal to him...
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00:00I wanted a different narrative for my son. I felt like the media gives you this sense of hopelessness,
00:07which is what I was left with. I wanted to go to Ferguson and find something that also gave me some sense of hope.
00:14Something about my wife being pregnant at that moment really had the Michael Brown incident hit home for me in a way that some of the other incidents hadn't.
00:45I was actually arrested and framed when I was 19 for a crime that I didn't commit.
00:50Luckily, I was able to get myself, or my parents were able to get me, get that expunged from my records.
00:58But Michael Brown's situation obviously did not end up the same way mine did.
01:05My family comes from Nigeria, and I lived in Nigeria as a child, though I was born here.
01:18I lived there for seven years, and so I never really thought of myself as African American until this incident happened.
01:24And I think that was really a crucial turning point for me.
01:35Michael Brown Jr.'s body being on the ground for four and a half hours during the summer, uncovered, in an apartment building with children walking by,
01:51I think ultimately was the highest form of disrespect, I think, to the people of the community.
01:59Again, people say this all the time, but really akin to the lynchings of old, or maybe not so old, but the lynchings that have happened to black people in this country.
02:10They're on display as a form of psychological terrorism as well for the other members of the community.
02:17At least that's how people felt.
02:20And I think that level of psychological terrorism, as they would call it, led people to really say enough is enough.
02:29The people of Ferguson, for 400 plus days, were out there on the streets protesting in various forms.
02:36The city of Ferguson does look different.
02:50I mean, I want to be clear to distinguish between looking different and actually being different.
02:56So we have a black police chief.
02:58We have a more integrated force.
03:01We have a black mayor now in Ferguson.
03:03While the face of Ferguson has changed, I think the real power lies in the economics, as it always does.
03:10So who are the holders of power in Ferguson?
03:14I think those individuals are probably still white.
03:16I think ultimately the people who are working class in Ferguson still feel like they are still harassed.
03:22They still feel like they don't have the services and the resources that they need.
03:33I think there's this misunderstanding and mythology around black people that somehow they don't want the same things that white people want.
03:48That we want our kids to be out on the street and we want our kids to be thugs or whatever.
03:53And there's this sort of really distorted perspective that is deeply troubling.
04:02And that is perpetuated by the media, right?
04:04Every night you see a mugshot or whatever else you see on the news.
04:07Wilson said Brown looked up at him and he, quote, had the most intense aggressive face.
04:12The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon.
04:14My goal in making the film was how do I create a better environment for my son?
04:18How do I not sort of voice this psychic burden on him that most black people in this country live with?
04:26That their life really doesn't have any meaning.
04:29That their life is constantly in danger and doesn't have any value.
04:32I mean the most important thing to me was how do we humanize the people that were impacted by the events on August 9th, 2014?
04:48I am here to try to make sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else's family.
04:54This is very terrible for us and for everyone else that has lost.
05:01And we are here to get justice.
05:03Every time I talk to or see Michael Brown Sr.
05:09I just feel this sort of pain in my chest which might be a little overly dramatic.
05:16But I just cannot imagine what he's been through and what he's going through now.
05:21I wanted people to see that in the midst of all that,
05:26Michael Brown Sr. created something that is making a difference for other families that have lost their loved ones as well.
05:33That's a message we don't know and don't hear about with regards to black men.
05:42I felt like I wanted to use this film to also honor black people.
05:47As someone who is both African-American and African at the same time,
05:51I felt like I've learned and gained a lot from African-American people.
05:56I've witnessed a level of resilience, a level of strength that is not demonstrated in very many other cultures around the world.
06:06What African-American people have gone through for 400 plus years on this continent is unfathomable.
06:14We should want to understand and have reverence for that level of resilience because there's something we can all learn from that.
06:21I think that is how African-American people should be viewed and that's what I wanted to capture.